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An anonymous reader writes Even though modern humans started appearing around 200,000 years ago, it was only about 50,000 years ago that artistry and tool making became popular. New research shows that society bloomed when testosterone levels in humans started dropping. A paper published in the journal Current Anthropology, suggests that a testosterone deficit facilitated the friendliness and cooperation between humans, which lead to modern society. "Whatever the cause, reduced testosterone levels enabled increasingly social people to better learn from and cooperate with each other, allowing the acceleration of cultural and technological innovation that is the hallmark of modern human success," says University of Utah biology graduate student Robert Cieri.

I have trouble with pronouncements like these, because it's so easy to jump to conclusions about correlation and causation.

It seems like their conclusion might have a Politically Correct component. Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?

Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?

If you follow evolutionary theory, that's the first conclusion one should reach. To assume otherwise is quite scientifically naive. As humans became more proficient at survival and had more time on their hands, being able to sit still and think for a little while was likely a good thing.

It is also the only reasonable theory form a biological standpoint, as Testosterone has been studied exhaustively and simply does not in anyway reduce cooperation or friendliness. In fact in general testosterone seems to be positively correlated to number of friends and ability to cooperate.

Testosterone is linked with increased muscle mass, and thus with increased rest metabolism. A civilization that has lots of "Adonis" look-a-likes sitting around in the winter will not survive as well as a civilization with lots of beanpoles sitting around in the winter, because the beanpoles require less food per person per winter, and as such, the society will have more energy available to invest in improvements in technology and culture.

So, while increased testosterone is more sexually attractive, lower testosterone would have conferred a large survival advantage in ancient human history.

Some experiments could be devised to test this idea in fact--

Screen the population for a threshold of testosterone production, with a good distribution over ages, (so not all the low T people are 65+ and under 12) divide into two groups of 100, one with low T, and one with high T, pay them to live in isolation in a nice little log cabin up in the mountains, then just monitor their food consumption. According to the theory, the higher T population should consume more food doing the same rest activities as the lower T group. The experiment should determine a rough baseline for the difference, from which a (dangerous) extrapolation could be made.

It's actually a derogatory term for working-class white people from the south. I don't know why you are getting upset about this epithet when you are so quick to condemn women. Or are some forms of rampant discrimination OK but others are fine? It must be strange to live in your head.

Look here, the discussion is about the 'value' of testosterone for the advance of the human race and society.
It has been said here high(er) testosterone levels makes man less sociable and more aggressive, do you want to claim rednecks aren't an example for that category?

Define 'sociable'. The problem is that this spectrum is sublabled with a good/bad dichotomy, usually done by the 'educated', soft, extraverted, submissive, and effete people, who consider themselves superior to the more masculine, independent sorts. Despite what is said about them, they do speak and associate with others, but not for its own sake, but rather as part of some other goal, like work or play. They just don't have this incessant need to be around others all the time in order to function. The reality is that this group has its own 'sociability' and hierarchy that works for them. This has nothing to do with intelligence or capability. It's just too blunt and reality focused for most of those effete types to handle without falling to pieces, and naturally the effete groups doing most of the yammering these days associate positive traits like intelligence with the behaviors that make themselves feel good.

This, in turn, assumes that the effects of testosterone are consistant and linear, and that they are consistent across other variables, and that's not a safe assumption. First, there are likely one or more optima with testosterone levels, with some loss of function when not as those optima. Second, the effects are likely influenced strongly by other factors. For instance, oxytocin gets a lot of press as being the hug drug and all that, and its effects in terms of promoting social bonding and trust and so ar

The study's results, however, contradict this view sharply. Test subjects with an artificially enhanced testosterone level generally made better, fairer offers than those who received placebos, thus reducing the risk of a rejection of their offer to a minimum. "The preconception that testosterone only causes aggressive or egoistic behavior in humans is thus clearly refuted," sums up Eisenegger. Instead, the findings suggest that the hormone increases the sensitivity for status. For animal species with relatively simple social systems, an increased awareness for status may express itself in aggressiveness. "In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behavior secures status, and not aggression," surmises study co-author Michael Naef from Royal Holloway London. "The interplay between testosterone and the socially differentiated environment of humans, and not testosterone itself, probably causes fair or aggressive behavior."

Moreover the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone causes aggression is apparently deeply entrenched: those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone compound and not the placebo stood out with their conspicuously unfair offers. It is possible that these persons exploited the popular wisdom to legitimate their unfair actions. Economist Michael Naef states: "It appears that it is not testosterone itself that induces aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone. In a society where qualities and manners of behavior are increasingly traced to biological causes and thereby partly legitimated, this should make us sit up and take notice." The study clearly demonstrates the influence of both social as well as biological factors on human behavior.

Animal studies have shown a strong correlation between testosterone and aggression (the opposite of what the GPP asserts). In humans, the data is less conclusive, but tends to show a similar correlation. Wisnoskij's assertion that testosterone makes people friendly and cooperative is not supported by any evidence that I can find.

That was ONE study that found that testosterone can make men more cooperative in very narrow circumstances (when they think it will improve their social status). There are many studies showing it makes both animals and people more aggressive.

And your post was a perfect example of condemning something without a shred of evidence, because it fits in with your notion that political correctness is bad. If I've not seen plenty of posts from you haranguing women for daring to be scientists, or making other, equally-ridiculous claims about various sections of the human race, I could pin it to unfortunate ignorance. However it seems like you are wilfully-ignorance, and filled with hate and anger. It's no wonder you'd jump on anything to condemn that which you perceive to call you out on your disgusting behaviour.

Other than a few Socialist countries -- what country thrives on truth? A Half truth is often Patriotism when a full fledged Lie would prove better.

Sure, you can say "results in violence" because the French did away with some crooked royals once, but there was quite a long run of "lying our asses off". You think the cult to stack rocks in Egypt was anything but a "keep people busy" program?

Political Correctness can be annoying -- but it used to be called "Polite" -- only now it extends to people outside of t

Doesn't work. Humans started having more time on their hands 1.8 million years ago, but this DECLINED as religion (50k years ago) and agriculture (20k years ago) arose. With the advent of full-time farming (7k years ago) free time almost entirely vanished.

Nomadic peoples had more free time than any sedentary society prior to the middle of the 20th century, and even then only for the gentry and the middle classes, where said middle classes have since almost entirely suffered extermination at the hands of the

Good points, and I certainly would not pretend to understand all the factors. My point was more along the lines of this being on of many things we see that seems to skip over the fundamental basic of evolution to make some other correlation. The one I proposed was certainly not enlightened, but more an example, albeit a poor one based on your response. I just get a little tired of these article suggesting certain relationships when they are merely studying them and have only circumstantial evidence. Evoluti

Both are making assumptions but the later is the correct assumption.Unless you have a rational reason for WHY testosterone levels fell then it makes alot more sense tosay that "the rise of civilization caused testosterone to fall" than it does to say that some unknownforce caused testosterone to fall which caused civilization to rise so the correct headline should read:

Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?

Or that the removal of some other threat or improvement in environmental conditions meant both that conditions existed that favoured the rise of civilisation and that testosterone was no longer required to the same extent as previously.

Or even that testosterone played its role in enabling humans to overcome a threat that needed to be overcome in order for civiliation to be practical, and since that threat had been overcome the testosterone was no longer needed... in which case it was responsible for the ris

Nice "wisdom" there. But why did you stop thinking there? There IS definitely a link between excessive testosterone and the lowering of sustained logic, reason and mental stability and order. (Just as there is similar evidence liking excessive estrogen with similar behaviors among women) What happens to people, both men and women when they are on steroids? That's been well established in the medical sciences for decades.

So to say correlation/causation is a problem here conveniently missed the establishe

As I mentioned above, there are likely one or more optima for testosterone, with a loss of function correlated with not being on one of those optima. It's not likely (looking at other hormonal systems) that it's simply a linear relationship - both too much and too little are possible. (There is also a lot of room for changes on the level of receptor density or binding affinity - so a smaller amount of testosterone could conceivably have more effect.)

... If they continue to use a term as poisoned as "feminist" then you might look to question their actual motive and intent.

This is the problem right here: the term feminist has been poisoned intentionally. Its similar to the right-wing hit job on 'liberal'; the only way to defeat an idea that most people already accept is to reframe and demonize that idea as something objectionable.

You could find me a billion links to nutty, anti-male websites if you like. It doesn't matter. If you think it does matter than I allow me to discredit all right-wing politics by giving you a link to the American Nazi Party, or to discredit any idea of treating animals humanely by linking to PETA.

Feminism is the belief that women are just as capable and deserving of respect as men. Unless you believe women deserve less respect or fewer opportunities, simply for being female, congratulations, you are a feminist. Being anti-male, wanting to feminize men or de-feminize women, denying basic biological differences, or whatever other stupid idea you have been taught feminists believe, these are categorically not feminism.

Feminism is basically a social criticism that in many spheres of our society an elite group of men has taken control for their own benefit, to the exclusion of others. Keep in mind that women only gained the right to vote last century, as late as 1970 in France, and that people are still alive who remember women not being able work after marriage, legalized martial rape, and a whole bunch of other obviously misogynist practices, and its not a huge stretch to imagine that our society might still not be 100% perfect, or that social groups who were severely discriminated against in living memory still are.

Even if you are 100% self-interested, you should recognize that as women have gained more freedom over the last 50 year so have men, particularly in areas of child care and parental leave. Freedom and rights are not zero sum. The fact is that the same 'boys club' attitude that is bad for women is also bad for the vast majority of men.

I'll leave you with a Germaine Greer quote (paraphrasing):

Aspiring to equality with men is a terrible mistake, since men live and work in a frighteningly unfree and tyrannical society, one built on confederacies and conspiracies, on initiation and blooding rituals, on shared antisocial behaviour, on ostracisms and punishments, practical jokes, clannishness and discrimination.

This is the problem right here: the term feminist has been poisoned intentionally. Its similar to the right-wing hit job on 'liberal'; the only way to defeat an idea that most people already accept is to reframe and demonize that idea as something objectionable.

I don't care enough to express an opinion on the rest of your post and the debate you're in, but this part strikes me as very false. A conspiracy theory is completely unnecessary to explain the "poisoning" of the term feminism. It's entirely believable that, as radical elements of feminism naturally arose (and they did arise naturally; there's no way in hell that's a false flag operation), both non-feminists and those with actively anti-feminist inclinations lumped those radical elements with the less extre

I don't care enough to express an opinion on the rest of your post and the debate you're in...

I find it pretty weird that such a logical, clear thinker has no opinion on the question of whether society is unfair to approximately 50% if its members, but fair enough, your choice.

... but this part strikes me as very false. A conspiracy theory is completely unnecessary to explain the "poisoning" of the term feminism. It's entirely believable that, as radical elements of feminism naturally arose (and they did arise naturally; there's no way in hell that's a false flag operation), both non-feminists and those with actively anti-feminist inclinations lumped those radical elements with the less extreme versions of feminism. That's a story as old as time, same has happened with Islam, atheism, race relations, LGBT issues, etc. People are really bad at ignoring threatening extremes. It's a natural impulse, no deliberate poisoning necessary. As far as I know, the only viable means of fighting this trend is for the more moderate (but still similarly aligned) elements to actively, loudly disavow the radicalization of their views.

I wouldn't describe it as a conspiracy, but as a group of people attacking an idea they view as immoral or dangerous, in the most effective way possible. This often involves picking isolated sentences out of context to make a different impression that you would get reading the entire book, or blog post or whatever. Its very effective in our soundbite, 'gotcha' culture. I think the exact same thing happens to the other groups of people you mentioned, usually by the same reactionary people.

People are really bad at ignoring threatening extremes. It's a natural impulse, no deliberate poisoning necessary. As far as I know, the only viable means of fighting this trend is for the more moderate (but still similarly aligned) elements to actively, loudly disavow the radicalization of their views.

This shifts the burden from people who over-generalize to the objects of generalization, to police other people. Trying to control free thinkers and individualists is folly, as is trying to protect the ignorant from their own errors. People who are interested will explore ideas for themselves. Gay people shouldn't need to hide the guy bare-ass in chaps and a cowboy hat, and nothing else, to be respected and have equality before the law. Feminists shouldn't have to hide the bra-burners to have the same rights and opportunities as men.

I also think that for all your example there are plenty of moderates putting their ideas out there, and denouncing extremists, and it doesn't work the way you claim it should. You can't argue people out of positions they were never argued into in the first place. The majority of anti-feminists, anti-gay, anti-whatever people who I have run into have these opinions because of cultural and political identity.

Defensiveness won't get you anywhere, it'll just legitimize the suspicion surrounding the issue further.

I wasn't trying to be defensive, but to defend an idea. I didn't see any good posts defending feminism, and plenty of weak ones attacking it.

I didn't say I have no opinion, I said I didn't care enough to express one, so you didn't think my post was meant as an agreement or disagreement with the rest of your arguments, which I don't feel like getting involved with.

whether society is unfair to approximately 50% if its members

You wouldn't happen to be talking about women when you say "approximately 50% if its members", would you? Careful, someone might take that the wrong way.

Gay people shouldn't need to hide the guy bare-ass in chaps and a cowboy hat, and nothing else, to be respected and have equality before the law. Feminists shouldn't have to hide the bra-burners to have the same rights and opportunities as men.

"Shouldn't have to" is a pretty non-informative statement. Children shouldn't have to die of malaria, but they do. I was telling you w

I didn't say I have no opinion, I said I didn't care enough to express one, so you didn't think my post was meant as an agreement or disagreement with the rest of your arguments, which I don't feel like getting involved with.

Fair enough, maybe I was feeling a little suspicious of your motives. I'm glad we can keep this civil.

You wouldn't happen to be talking about women when you say "approximately 50% if its members", would you? Careful, someone might take that the wrong way.

Yep, that's exactly what I meant. What is the 'wrong way' to take that statement?

"Shouldn't have to" is a pretty non-informative statement. Children shouldn't have to die of malaria, but they do. I was telling you what approach I think has the largest chance of neutralizing the venomous effect of radical feminism/Islam/atheism/etc.

I take your point about what is vs what should be. I'm not quite as fatalistic about people's attitudes, given that we raise the next generation with our values. Given the huge progress we have made on these social issues, I don't think telling radicals to tone their attitudes down will make progress happen faster. Simply,

1. "Improve things"? Really? There are loads of women who would love nothing more than to raise their children instead if having babysitters do it while they work and feel guilty no matter what choice they make. And for those women who feel fine about abandoning their children to "trusted strangers," How is that an improvement?! Desensitized, unloving, unnurturing mothers?? Bad families raise bad children who grow into bad adults. And when they have children (and that's happening now) they have NO ide

1) The political push is for getting more women into studies in school they don't want and when they can't get the numbers they want in those schools, they close the programs down. In the workplace, the same sort of numbers games are being played in a way rather similar to race baiters. And women are being "shamed" for not being successful career women. Smart women don't buy into it, but we live in a consumer society -- smart people are increasingly rare.

Here's a falsifiable statement: do a small group of elite men dominate society for their own interests? This statement is false if no group dominates society, or if a group of elite women do. Given how subjective many of these concepts are, its not as neatly falsifiable than Newton's laws, for example. Life is complicated. I find it interesting that this theory is basically what people are espousing when talking about inequality and the 1%, its just that the connection to gender isn't as obvious if you are a male. Few would deny that most of the money is in male hands.

As for what feminism actually does, I'll trust my own judgement on that thanks. The fact that you mentioned 'bra burners' is interesting as it is actually a myth [snopes.com]. I referenced it as an example in one of my posts but I don't literally think it is something that happened.

The fact that you mentioned 'bra burners' is interesting as it is actually a myth.

Wait, what? Snopes severely overstated that one.

Bra burning was quite real. Perhaps the origin is mythological, but if that's the case, life imitated art in a hurry, and kept at it for quite some time. My mother has personal memories of protests where bras were burned at the University of Chicago, and two different family friends the same age have similar memories from other places. It was quite real. It made the nightly news. Video exists. Yes some of that video is Hollywood depictions of fictional feminists, but not all of it. Not by a long shot.

My problem is that it's truthy sounding nonsense claiming the imprimatur of verifiability using sciency-sounding words, and is being used to persecute large sections of the population.

So you accept the notion of widespread persecution, but you think its directed towards men? That is a pretty weird thing to believe in a society where the vast majority of politicians, CEOs, and wealthiest people are men. I just don't see it.

And you see this is where feminism falls down, extrapolating from the "personal is the political" mantra of the 70s feminists point to a few rich people as evidence that all men have oppressed all women forever, despite these few wealthy people never having acted to improve the situation or welfare of men as a class. Your mythical boys club doesn't exist. As for most of the money being in the hands of men, most of the spending power is in the hands of those poor oppressed women [she-conomy.com]. But hey what's a few nuances to the blunt instrument that is feminism.

My original post made the exact opposite argument. The 'boys club' is not interested in helping men as a category, its a handful of selfish men (with a handful of women) pissing on everyone else. If you actually thought this is what feminists believed, no wonder you

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. And my father worked every day. My earliest memories were a mother who cooked and cleaned every day and did things with us. (She had 5 sons) And when my father came home, we all ran to the door and hugged his legs and I used to ride his boot (he was a blue-collar worker) as he walked around like Frankenstein's monster. We loved as a family in the most old fashioned and "out dated" way imaginable.

So your snark is 180 degrees off mark. Seriously. The bitter reality is

There IS definitely a link between excessive testosterone and the lowering of sustained logic,
reason and mental stability and order. (Just as there is similar evidence liking excessive
estrogen with similar behaviors among women) What happens to people, both men and
women when they are on steroids? That's been well established in the medical sciences
for decades.

Except that it hasn't. If you're thinking about the so-called "roid-rage" phenomenon, it is mostly media created and in any case has nothing to

Please at least google the correlation between agressive and violent behavior with higher levels of testosterone? I don't need to make an argument when there is that. That steroid use makes the distinctive results more clear and obvious with clear "before and after" results is a terrific sign post which mere genetic and other natural survey oriented studies can seek to prove or disprove... and HAVE. Unfortunately the ones which show that people of different races have variying levels which may account fo

Actual feminism is as much about hatred as the civil rights movement was in the 60s. You are confusing some very vocal idiots with the rest of the movement. "Feminist" is what you call someone when they think men and women should be treated equally. That's it. It's got "fem" in the name because currently women are getting the raw deal at the moment. If women were in disproportionately in control, men had lower wages, were denied opportunities, etc. then it would be called "masculism" and the end goal would be the same - equality between the sexes.

Thanks to 40 years of affirmative action and political correctness, pretty much all the 'science' around sex differences has been polluted beyond repair and must be called into question at this point. If some 'study' enters the mainstream media, you can be almost certain it is meant as propaganda and not to educate.

or that the ones with high testosterone were the ones sent out to fight other tribes or hunt where there was a higher chance of dying/being hurt in such way that you died later by diseases and if the community is small enough them dying of would have made a great impact on passing of the higher testosterone gene

Seems like the biggest cause for the drop would be people realizing that their biggest baddest brutes, were seriously poor negotiators. Sending in the little guy because he was less threatening would make sense. Over time, less threatening males were necessary more and more often.

What's more likely is that with the advent of agriculture, more people spent their lives living in one place, with a number of consequences. One is that women and their children were more likely to live their lives alongside their other children, so having more cooperative, less violent children became advantageous. Another is that women were more likely to be impregnated by one of the local farmers, rather than the hot wandering barbarian hunter or the gang of rapists.

Furthermore, there is a theory that the primary purpose of developing agriculture was not for food but for alcohol. It may have been that the peaceful farmers' access to stuff that could get women drunk was conducive to them having more babies.

"Whatever the cause, reduced testosterone levels enabled increasingly social people to better learn from and cooperate with each other, allowing the acceleration of cultural and technological innovation that is the hallmark of modern human success," says University of Utah biology graduate student Robert Cieri.

Anecdotal reports are worthless.A more thorough review of this issue is in the latest book by Jared Diamond "The World Until Yesterday" where he systematically studies the different stages in the evolution of society and shows a progression to less violence and more cooperation.

The body is extremely complicated. There are maybe a million chemicals? Choosing one supposedly connected with men but actually present in both men and women, testosterone [webmd.com], and talking about its importance is thinly veiled hostility.

The current wave of hostility of women toward men began with the book The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, a woman who was very confused about life. The book mentioned negative things men do, and avoided mentioning the negative things women do. Part of her viewpoint was influenced by the fact that she was trying to get women to have sex with her.

There is a movie that shows Simone de Beauvoir was treated as an equal by Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher and friend. She was not second.

Both Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre had terrible childhoods and both did things in their adult lives that demonstrated their confusion.

The Washington Post article linked in the Slashdot summary says, "No, this isnâ(TM)t some jab at dudes." Yes it is, and extremely stupid about biochemistry and civilization, also.

You are aware the majority of the electorate in the US is female, right? So maybe there's a slim possibility that they're voting for something other than the genitals of political candidates, due to not being eight years old anymore?

You are aware the majority of the electorate in the US is female, right? So maybe there's a slim possibility that they're voting for something other than the genitals of political candidates, due to not being eight years old anymore?

You seem to be implying that femaleness equates to somehow being less bigoted than being male. I think that is somewhat unlikely.

I'm directly saying that people, men and women, who are mature adults vote in their own best interests rather than pandering to some sort of juvenile playground instinct as feminists would prefer them to. They vote for the person they believe will best represent those interests. Now if you want to talk about why more women don't stand for election, go for it, but that's a different conversation. There is, after all, nothing stopping them.

Amusing but wrong. You can't use "the people on top are men" to mean "all men are on top" And neither negates the very real hostility men experience in the form of "dumb dad" stereotypes, more severe punishments for equal crimes, biased family courts, the pervasive idea that men are dangerous, and many more.

Lets suppose some of those things are true. They might be, who knows because, as you say, not a lot of people are talking about them. Fucking do something about it then instead of just complaining. "We have problems too, so therefore your problems are invalid and we should all live in shit together" is not an argument. Feminists are trying to fix problems that matter to them. You try and fix problems that matter to you.

Subjects with high levels of testosterone behave pretty much like savages animals, I have witnessed such cases. They behave aggressively, always trying to harm other men (domination, "alpha male") and trying to take woman by force, there is no way to have cooperation between this type of people. The chance to have cooperation between this type of people is very small.

I recall watching a documentary on doping in the cycling world - possibly a documentary on Lance Armstrong, I don't remember - in which they described some cyclist who had taken a course of testosterone as becoming quick-tempered and violent as a result, and in a very short time too. I guess it is true

Testosterone isn't some Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde concoction like you seem to think it is.

As long as we're dealing with anecdotes I will throw mine into the ring. I've engaged in powerlifting as a hobby for the past two years, during which I have met some very impressive, and dedicated, individuals. These men are strong. Really strong. Functionally strong. They're not just pounding out hammer curls and shrugs to get a pump. They are training for strength, the kind of strength where elevated testosterone just comes with the territory. And they've all been pussycats. After benching just shy of 400lbs they aren't grunting and scowling, they're grinning ear-to-ear and are practically giggling. They're considerate with the equipment and readily share when the weight room is busy. They don't scoff at the 110lbs new guy, rather they're begging the new guy to take before-and-after shots because, "...if you keep this up you are going to be AWESOME in a year!"

Testosterone does not cause assholish-ness, per se, so much as it exacerbates it. If you are a kind, decent, person then becoming strong (and thus achieving higher levels of testosterone) will not change that. But if you are dick...well now you are a dick who is strong and you likely no longer feel the need to restrain your jackass behavior because you feel as though you can physically overwhelm any challengers to your supreme phallus.

There's a complicated relationship between muscle mass and testosterone. Higher levels of testosterone do help you to build muscle, but there's also a strong indication that heavy resistance exercise increases testosterone and that higher levels of muscle mass will increase your testosterone production.

Subjects with high testosterone levels* are socialized to compete for some goal. Subjects with low testosterone levels (women) compete against each other. I don't think you want to live in a society dominated by people always trying to trip each other up while smiling at each other.

I have witnessed such cases.

And I have witnessed the aforementioned behavior. Taken advantage of it on numerous occasions as well. I'd rather deal with someone that confronts me than creeps around behind my back.

The study's results, however, contradict this view sharply. Test subjects with an artificially enhanced testosterone level generally made better, fairer offers than those who received placebos, thus reducing the risk of a rejection of their offer to a minimum. "The preconception that testosterone only causes aggressive or egoistic behavior in humans is thus clearly refuted," sums up Eisenegger. Instead, the findings suggest that the hormone increases the sensitivity for status. For animal species with relatively simple social systems, an increased awareness for status may express itself in aggressiveness. "In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behavior secures status, and not aggression," surmises study co-author Michael Naef from Royal Holloway London. "The interplay between testosterone and the socially differentiated environment of humans, and not testosterone itself, probably causes fair or aggressive behavior."

Moreover the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone causes aggression is apparently deeply entrenched: those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone compound and not the placebo stood out with their conspicuously unfair offers. It is possible that these persons exploited the popular wisdom to legitimate their unfair actions. Economist Michael Naef states: "It appears that it is not testosterone itself that induces aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone. In a society where qualities and manners of behavior are increasingly traced to biological causes and thereby partly legitimated, this should make us sit up and take notice." The study clearly demonstrates the influence of both social as well as biological factors on human behavior.

Believe it or not, I have witnessed such cases and explained to me that they were caused by excess testosterone (natural or injected supplements). Now to give opinion on Slashdot is necessary for you to be a doctor on the subject? Well, you have every right to not like what others say.

High testosterone levels lead to dominant behaviour, aggression and generally a fixation with power and getting pussy. Cooperation and quietly working on things with others certainly takes a back seat then. It's individual success in terms of mating and dominating over success that is actually useful in the long run and with "boring" things.

That said, not being surprised in no evidence. In best/. fashion I haven't read the fine article, but I would want to see some mechanism that actually LEAD to lower tes

Milk was not evolutionary; changes in gut bacteria allowed the drinking of milk because of stupid human behavior they were not eating properly so those children who could use milk lived at higher rates.

The solution to many problems would be changing the evolutionary pressure so that aggressive and likely testosterone high males do not have offspring. It may currently be unusual but it is NOT crewel to vasectomy rapists and other violent offenders.

While I find interesting the idea that lesser testosterone is required for cooperation, my opinion is that the path to that conclusion is rather weak.

They studied testosterone-induced strong features in skulls, observed they vanished as cooperation raised, and concluded that testosterone must have lowered as cooperation increased.

But correlation is not causation. Another explanation could be that as cooperation increased, fights decreased, and hence the need for strong skull features.Testosterone could have remained at steady level while its effect on skulls lowered.

Myostation, whihc makes them a fifth as strong as other apes the weight. It is thought this diverted metabolic resources to the brain and running. Undergorund chemists are seeking to neutralize of this statin to improve athletes. Medical scientists hopign to stop muscle wasting in dystropy and old people.

The amount of hate-speech against men in society today is rather alarming. In the days before feminism, I'm not sure men ever suggested that women be exterminated as a gender. And yet today, the war on men grows increasingly loud and hate-filled by the day.

In the days before feminism, I'm not sure men ever suggested that women be exterminated as a gender.

Perhaps because that is not practical. The human species cannot continue to exist without women. Men, on the other hand, could be replaced with a sperm bank. Long before the sperm bank is depleted, female scientists should be able to perfect human ova-fusion [ieet.org], which is already working in mice.

I am not saying men should be exterminated. I am just saying that there are no significant technical barriers.

Or perhaps because only something as demented as feminism could come up with such a lunatic idea in the first place.

The human species cannot continue to exist without women. Men, on the other hand, could be replaced with a sperm bank. Long before the sperm bank is depleted, female scientists should be able to perfect human ova-fusion [ieet.org], which is already working in mice.

I am not saying men should be exterminated. I am just saying that there are no significant technical barriers.

Completely unneccessary. Assuming a world where feminists (not women mind you, women tend to like men quite a lot) reign supreme, why not just keep a minimum breeding stock of boys and off them after they hit age 20? After all that's what leading feminists Mary Daly and Sally Miller Gearhart wanted, reduce the population of men to 10% or so, frothing nazis that they were.

Happily however the general population is starting to go very sour indeed on feminism, and I would hope to see the final end of the religion within my lifetime.

Testosterone is the hormone which is responsible for aggressiveness and individuality, right? Except when it's not. It's the 'everybody knows' kind of wisdom that is bunk -> I've been studying this off and on for a while, and the hormone in both males and females that is responsible for aggression, IMHO, is progesterone; think of your wife / gf who gets PMS, this hormone is in play, and men have some of it in their systems as well. Testosterone seems to get a bad rap, with half the research saying this, and half saying that. Read up on it...the scary thought is, if one half is right, then chemical castration of sex offendors actually makes things worse, rather than better.

I have no issue with coexisting. I do have issue with groups using government to provide privileges to them at my financial/social expense based on the very attributes they claim I use to judge them. I have no issue with equality of opportunity either, but feminists need to realize that if they want equal seating at the trough, they need to be willing to help when it's time to fill it, and when it's time to clean it. No shortcuts or incentives that aren't also offered to everyone else. Her body, her right, her choice? Fine by me, but that also means her responsibility. No using the baby to rope daddy in for an easy meal ticket (or just to stick it to him), at least, not without a signed contract/marriage license. When I bring this up, white knights and most women fly into defensive shitstorms, but the reality is that if women want equality in the eyes of men, they have to give up the expectation of chattel privilege and we need to strip the lobbied-for favoritism out. Affirmative action law and policies must die.

The last 40 years of feminism have made women the most privileged class in western society. Everything is now modeled, shaped, spindled, folded, and mutilated to benefit and cater to them. Thus, nowadays, when women put on melodramas about some guy looking at them in a hallway, or asking them to coffee at work, and then claim they have to set up buddy systems or demand 'safe spaces' as a result, it's really hard for me to take them seriously. It would be a laughable joke if it wasn't also so toxic to men, and western society's long term prospects. Women today just abuse the system to gain leverage in whatever spaces they're in because they know they can get away with it, and it sullies the reputation of those few women who really were assaulted or discriminated against.

Not me, baby, there's a curve in there somewhere obviously. I'm testosterony as hell, barely civilized enough to get a paycheck and spread my genes far and wide.Observing rules of science, it is the more genteel, sensitive types who have opted to seek infertile same-sex relationships that take themselves out of the gene pool forever.This article obviously reflects research of biased and poor criteria that places the subjects in an artificial never-never land based on wishful thinking of some sister-boy in a

Militant feminism? Near 100% of _real_ feminists want men to exist and a majority to keep traditionally male behavior in large. Militant feminists that doesn't want men to exist are very few, should be close in number to those militant environmentalists that think people should be exterminated...

yet for some reason those are the ones that get all the coverage. Try going to a feminism blog and reading for yourself. I had someone try and equate telling a woman she has nice eyes to rape just earlier today. apparently chivalry is dead, and it was killed by women

At best, a 'coffeeshop' style feminist wants men around as ATM machines and 'tough job' handlers.. These are the ones who think feminism is nothing more than equality between the two sexes, and think that men are or really should be women with penises...except when equality gets too hard for them, then they want their white knight to save the day.

In the past, the militant kind wanted men reduced in population, made subservient to women, or just outright used as slaves or eliminated. Today, they express that same misandry by pushing policies supporting that mentality in education, media programming, civil law, criminal law, and, are now making/funding their presence in subcultures, like technology and gaming. You have to be careful with this kind of thing, as the poison is in the implied, 'unintended' outcomes of said policies: Schools focus on girls because supposedly they're such victims, and, now, boys are left behind and/or are made to comply effeminately, at the college level, 2/3 graduates are women as male populations continue their decline, media/entertainment has been softened and made more about relationships and feelings (everything is now a 'reality' soap opera), employers must meet quotas and build office policy around feminine imperatives as defaults (destroying male psychoaccoustic spaces and making them female), product design and advertising now also focuses almost exclusively on feminine imperatives.

It is NOT about anyone's liberation. It uses women's desire for protection and provision to help bootstrap tyrannical power. Like those stories about people making deals with the devil, initially it's great for the recipient, but in the end, everyone gets burned.

I seriously don't understand how they can measure the level of testosterone from 50,000 years ago. Was it recorded with fine detail? Hell, did they know it existed?

Anyway. The lower testosterone levels could be a coincidence that arose at the same time humans discovered the benefits of empathy, which is essential in group negotiations and community support.

They didn't. Here is their logic train:

- They measured facial characteristics, some of these characteristics have been associated with aggression (not testosterone levels).- There are studies that link aggression with testosterone.- Therefore, early humans had large degrees of aggression and therefore testosterone.- Modern human skulls have fewer / less of the linked facial features, therefore our testosterone levels are lower.

- Therefore early human testosterone levels were higher and further, this was selected for in some way, shape for fashion.

Total BS. Two speculative leaps and a nice large jump to a conclusion. It is trivial to create other equally valid hypotheses from this data.

A Russian scientist turned wild foxes into cute puppies in about 10 generations by breeding for lower adrenaline levels

Not necessarily adrenaline levels, but that may have been the way it worked out. All they bred for was aggression, the more aggressive foxes were not allowed to breed. This resulted in a tamer fox, but also a lot of other traits that we associate with dogs (juvenilization, coloration patterns, vocalization, etc). Just selecting for one thing can have a profound effect on the species.

Government paying for birth control? I thought that was about corporations being "forced" to pay for birth control. Although that was all about corporations being "forced" to allow the employees to spend the money in question.

The government paying for birth control in general is not such a bad idea. The poor ones might actually use it and breed less poverty.

You would think that Republicans would be all about shrinking the welfare rolls and doing pretty much anything to do it, even kicking fundies to the cur

Why not neither. More advanced societies can find some function for the low testosterone members. And so they survive and breed.

In hunter-gatherer societies, everyone needs to go out and kill some game. Once social groups get bigger and economies develop trade, they get more diverse. Someone can stay behind in the village and make furniture or bake bread.